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Monday, September 25, 2006

Austin, Day 5

Day 5

Up early, first thing in the morning, only 4 hours sleep. We got picked up, and taken to Smitty's barbecue, which is a huge, dark place made of wood and metal, where they cook massive amounts of meat. You would not believe me if I told you the amount of meat they dumped on the table for us. So here's a photo:

The place was kind of dark and smokey, looked like it was 200 years old or something. Really atmospheric and cool, but a little worrying in case we ended up on the menu ourselves. We ate as much as we could, eating our own weight in meat once again. The intention then was to go back to the lodge, get 3 more hours sleep, and then head back out to catch Bug at 6.10. But for some reason, exhausted, spaced, full up, in pain, we decided to stay at the cinema and drink some beers. We got pretty rowdy, drinking outside the cinema entrances, and they tried to get us to move to the lobby area by moving the table. That didn't work, so they actually laid us a trail of beers on the floor. This guy came up and said "oh, hey! what's that over there? is it a trail... of beer??" and he was laughing at us, because we got up and followed it, as it led us down to the lobby area where we sat down. The entire staff were laughing at us, they know us too well now. We sat there and chatted for a while, then had our pictures taken with a cardboard cutout of Will Ferrell:

Aren't I handsome? Then we headed out to buy some t-shirts, and just made it back in time for Bug, William Friedkin's new movie. Fuck. Me. Sideways. Knew nothing about it, didn't want to know, and it totally blew my mind. It's better if you go in totally fresh, and it will just knock you sideways. Best movie I've seen all year, no question, deserves to be showered in awards, for the script (Tracy Letts), Friedkin, the two actors (Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon), but probably won't because it's not a safe, mainstream, easy watch. Superb. Watched Jay interview Adam Green then, had more beer, and went into the Severance screening at 11.30, where I was doing a Q+A again.

Second screening was even better than the first, really amazing. The response was louder, they clapped, cheered, screamed, and roared with laughter. It was so unreal, I was getting tears in my eyes at how well it was going. When it came time for the Q+A, I was a bit nervous cause I'd been drinking a lot during the day, but it went fine, I actually said a lot more than the previous one, and got lots of questions fired at me. I kept them entertained until we had to clear out, and people kept coming up and asking more stuff, shaking my hand, asking for autographs - some people even wanted their photo taken with me, which was totally fucking surreal for me, as I can't imagine anyone looking at the pictures and knowing who I was, I'm just me, you know? But they were all nervous about asking, it was strange to be in that reverse position. Really cool too. That went on for a while, and we headed back to the house for more drinks and celebrations. And we got an early night this time - 3.15am. Practically teatime, compared to previous nights.

The next day, something extremely cool happened - but I'll keep you in suspense for that one.